Overview

When madness is intolerable for sufferers, how do professional carers remain sane? Psychiatric institutions have always been places of fear and awe. Madness impacts on family, friends and relatives, but also those who provide a caring environment, whether in large institutions of the past, or community care in the present. This book explores the effects of the psychotic patient's suffering on carers and the culture of psychiatric services. Suffering Insanity is arranged as three essays. The first concerns staff stress in psychiatric services, exploring how the impact of madness demands a personal resilience as well as careful professional support, which may not be forthcoming. The second essay attempts a systematic review of the nature of psychosis and the intolerable psychotic experience, which the patient attempts to evade, and which the carer must confront in the course of daily work. The third essay returns to the impact of psychosis on the psychiatric services, which frequently configure in ways which can have serious and harmful effects on the provision of care. In particular, service may succumb to an unfortunate schismatic process resulting in sterile conflict, and to an assertively scientific culture, which leads to an unwitting depersonalisation of patients. Suffering Insanity makes a powerful argument for considering care in the psychiatric services as a whole system that includes staff as well as patients; all need attention and understanding in order to deliver care in as humane a way as possible. All those working in the psychiatric services, both in large and small agencies and institutions, will appreciate that closer examination of the actual psychology and interrelations of staff, as well as patients, is essential and urgent.

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9781583918937

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<p> This book raises very important issues for further reflection by all those working in the field of psychosis. Under supervision, the essays act as excellent, stimulating texts for use in teaching situations. The book is warmly recommended to the readership of this journal. - Richard Lucas, British Journal of Psychotherapy<p>. ..this wonderful gem of a book should be in the libraries of all psychoanalytic institutes, inpatient psychiatric units, and psychiatry residency training programs... My congratulations to Hinshelwood - and my thanks. - Eric R. Marcus, The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Winter 2008

Author Information

R.D. Hinshelwood is currently Professor of Psychoanalysis at the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex. Previously he was Consultant Psychotherapist working in mental health services, including the role of Clinical Director of The Cassel Hospital. He is a Member of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

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